Clinton Promises 500 Million New Solar Panels

An anonymous reader writes: Hillary Clinton, widely regarded as most likely to win the Democrat nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has unveiled her campaign climate plan. Speaking at Iowa State University, Clinton said she would set up tax incentives for renewable energy to drive further adoption. She also set a goal of installing half a billion new solar panels within her first term, if elected. Her plan would cost roughly $60 billion over 10 years, and she intends to pay for it by cutting tax breaks to the oil and gas industry. According to The Guardian, "Clinton has promised to make the issue of climate change a key pillar of her campaign platform."

Comments

Or let us keep our hard-earned money

[acoustix]

How about attempting to end all federal subsidies and let us keep our own money and spend it how we see fit?

Re:Or let us keep our hard-earned money

[Maxo-Texas]

Things are so much better since we cut taxes for the wealthy.

The infrastructure is crumbling and college tuition which was free or nearly free now costs more than a luxury car at state universities.

We should have more of this dog eat dog stuff until we can share the glorious french experience of 1789 to 1799.

Re:Or let us keep our hard-earned money

[kqs]

Sure it has; in the late 1800s and early 1900s there were almost no taxes and few subsidies. Everyone (but mostly the very rich) kept their money and spent it however they liked. The results were so unpleasant that the country decided that unions and OSHA, for all of their problems, were preferable to that state.

The problem with "spending our money as we see fit" is that we ignore externalities. I live in PA; our cheapest power comes from coal plants. Coal causes really bad health problems once it is burned and released into the air; modern exhaust scrubbers help but we still end up with lots of crud entering our lungs. But the health costs are an externality to the coal plants, so coal power's price is artificially low. I still pay the total cost in higher health care costs and a shorter working life, but it doesn't appear as a line item anywhere. By subsidizing solar panels and other less-polluting energies, the hope is to spend money now to reduce medicare and health insurance costs for the next 50 years. You may believe that this will not same you money overall, or that there is a better way to go about this, but it's not an illogical or crazy plan.

Re:Or let us keep our hard-earned money

[Immerman]

Because market inefficiencies make certain necessary adaptations effectively impossible.

For example, if Company A decides they want to be responsible corporate "citizens" and shift their energy consumption to sustainable sources, then they increase their costs and can no longer compete effectively with Company B unless there's a mass movement to purchase A's products because of their energy policy. And unfortunately the existence of Walmart and the like is proof enough that the mass of Americans consider up-front price to be the single most important factor in purchasing decisions, even when it increases their own long-term costs (a $50 appliance that needs to be replaced yearly is far more expensive than a $200 appliance that will last indefinitely), much less indirect social costs whose full weight won't be felt for generations.

Granted, at the moment if we removed all fossil-fuel subsidies renewable energy would look far more competitive, but to really level the playing field we would have to also impose new penalties on "socialized-cost subsidies" that have long been grandfathered in: Coal for example imposes phenomenal pollution costs at almost every stage. If however we imposed well-structured penalties/taxes to reflect the actual cost of reversing that damage then it would be one of the most expensive energy sources available.

Re:Or let us keep our hard-earned money

[kqs]

No, actually. A democracy (direct or representative) uses "voting" to collectively decide things. Which is what we are doing when we go to the polls in November 2016. We'll never get 100% agreement, so you or I may decide that our opinions were ignored, but this is how democracy works. Non-collective agreements are what you get with dictators of various stripes who cannot be removed from office.

I'd be happier if the results were less skewed by billions of dollars of legal bribery (AKA campaign funding), but we've decided that we're okay with that, unfortunately.

Reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

This is simply a reaction against Bernie Sanders. He is far more socialist than the original 'HIllary is a leftist (err center)' view and yet he is gaining ground (or beating Clinton in certain arenas).

I expect we'll see some republican candidates become more conservative as an action against Trump.

Also....who cares? These election promises are just hot smoke to blow up the public's collective ass. "Of course I love you, baby! No way, I'd never leave before breakfast!". etc.

Re:Normal human translation

[ArcadeMan]

The same could be said for the oil and gas industries. With billions in pure profits, why the fuck are they still getting subsidies and tax breaks?

Re:Hopefully the actual plan defines the terms

[Mr D from 63]

$60 Billion for 500 million panels = $120 per panel. Of course, panel size is not specified (not a needed detail when hawking votes), but the present incentives are more than that per panel if you are talking $1kw panels or larger. Is she proposing a reduction in incentives?

nice pivot.

[nimbius]

public: what about rampant police abuse of power?
the constant unending stream of shadow money into political campaigns?
the nearly endless war on terror and our secret torture prison in Cuba?
What are you going to do about the impending student loan collapse and the rampant US unemployment fueled by abusive trade agreements that are largely unreported?
what approach will you take to immigration reform?
How will you address the growing number of domestic mass shootings?
What is your approach to the continued neglect of social security? the highway trust? the Veterans Administration?
Clinton: Free solar panels for everything forever.

Re:She can give me 30 of them

[bobbied]

Yes, it DOES cost the power company.... Even if they don't pay you for the power you generate.

The electric grid needs to be stable, that requires that every watt of power being used, must be instantly available when the demand for it happens. When you hit that light switch, the power to run the light must be instantly generated someplace, turn that light off and the system must stop providing that power, instantly. This instant power on/off capacity is actually done using mechanical storage in the spinning parts of power generation plants.

Solar panels and inverters have no such storage capacity, they push power into the system when the sun shines, and stop doing that when it doesn't. This means that on cloudy days there is a large variation in the power available from photovoltaic solar sources. This variation can be averaged over large areas, but there remains a lot of uncertainty in how much power will be available at any instant, because it's really hard to forecast with accuracy where a cloud or thunder storm will be formed and where it will go.

So, this leads to how photovoltaic solar has "cost" for your electric provider. Because of the uncertainty of how much power your solar panels will have available, the provider must maintain sufficient margin available to handle the instantaneous load of the entire system. So they are burning fuel to be ready to produce electricity they are unlikely to use because of the unpredictable nature of photovoltaic solar and not knowing if they will get what they expect from that source or not.

In addition, there are transmission grid efficiency issues that come into play. It is really hard to keep the grid efficient when you know where and when you've scheduled power to be available and when and where it will be used. With the load variance introduced from a photovoltaic power source this problem becomes even more difficult. Power companies respond by using less efficient, but more stable configurations and power flows because of this varying load within the system. This inefficiency costs them as well.

So, I'm not saying that it's all bad for power companies. Being able to buy power from your solar panels at your retail rate during peak load where the going spot rate may be triple or more is a good thing for them, but I am saying that there ARE costs in efficiency and complexity for them.

Then there is a safety issue that's not talked about too much when the power grid goes down in local areas. Your Photovoltaic system can be pretty lethal for linemen if left connected when the power grid is down. Hopefully you have an inverter that figures out pretty quick when the line voltage and frequency is out of working range and shuts down, but there is a risk things won't work as expected and somebody gets hurt. It's a minor issue, but it does have cost for electric providers.

Where in the US Constitution.....

[cayenne8]

Hmm.

I"m still trying to thumb through my US Constitution and find where within the enumerated responsibilities and rights of the Federal Govt. that it is charged with picking winners and losers in industry. Also,where in there is the Fed govt supposed to figure out health costs of one industry vs another and penalize one over another?

And no, it has nothing to do with the "General Welfare" parts....